


We Will One Day Dock at the Same Port

by AutumnPen



Category: Bastion
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:12:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutumnPen/pseuds/AutumnPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Kid and Zulf were both badly wounded while escaping the Tazal Terminals. The Kid wakes up for the first time since the Evacuation and he and Zia talk over an unconscious Zulf. Increased levels of shmoopy-ness towards the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Will One Day Dock at the Same Port

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on my tumblr page, but I figured maybe it could be more easily found here. Also, categories confuse me. Read into it what you will, I suppose. I hope you enjoy!

The Kid blinks his eyes open slowly, and becomes aware of the stiff and ache that is his body. He stares at the space above him for some time before he realizes just what it is he sees.  
  
A tent. The top of a tent.  
  
At first, he is not sure of where he is, or how he came to be here. He remembers...  
  
He remembers fighting the Ura, the Tazal Terminals, finding Zulf, bloody and broken at the hands of his people. He remembers hefting him up onto his shoulder. The Kid shifts where he lies, groans, is relieved to find he can move his tired limbs.  
  
“Oh, you're awake.” A voice to his left. Zia's.  
  
He turns his head and sees her sitting there, a smile on her weary face. Her dark hair is coming loose of its braid, her eyelids are drooping just a little. She seems spent, but genuinely happy to see him awake. There is a body laid between them, close to his side – Zulf's. There is a warmth coming off of him that is almost uncomfortable to the Kid.  
  
The rest comes back to him. He'd made it out with Zulf. The Ura had stopped firing at him in the end, had laid down their weapons and watched silently as he dragged Zulf with him to the Sky Way, as they left the Tazal Terminals. Kid remembers coming back to the Bastion, leaving Zulf on his old knapsack. Adrenaline still running high, he'd found Zia and Rucks. There was a choice. He made the decision. Evacuate.  
  
After that, the little energy that remained within him swiftly drained and his body succumbed to his wounds. Whatever followed that moment remains a large blank spot in his memory. Rucks and Zia probably moved him here, he guesses – him and Zulf both.  
  
They must be flying right now, he thinks – flying far away from what had once been Caelondia.  
  
He takes an odd solace in this knowledge, and in Zia's face, in seeing Zulf lying between them. Rucks can't be far off, either. They're still together. He doesn't completely understand the comfort these thoughts give him, but he doesn't much question it, either. He's never much been one for questioning, after all.  
  
He shifts, trying to get an elbow under himself, to sit up, but Zia is holding out a hand for him to stop before he can lift himself up off the pallet that had been made for him.  
  
“No,” she says. “Don't move. You should rest.”  
  
Kid looks at her a moment, decides not to argue (could he ever argue with Zia? The thought alone is disquieting, seems almost unnatural), then eases himself back down. He notices for the first time that, but for bandages and a blanket thrown across him, he is bare from the waist up. The same is true for Zulf, laying beside him, on his back, unconscious. Kid can see his bare shoulders, his bare arms, laid atop his own blanket, hands settled against his middle. He takes a moment to watch Zulf breathing, slowly but steadily – another thing that fills him with unexpected relief.  
  
“D'you patch us up?” He asks, finding his voice a bit raspy, as he cuts his gaze back up to Zia.  
  
The corner of her lips quirk up in a half-smile. “Well, Rucks and I did the best we could.” He thanks her quietly and she simply nods. Her expression turns more serious after a moment. “How are you feeling?”  
  
“I'll be alright,” he assures her. In truth, he's sore all over, and still very tired (how long has he been out?), but he doesn't see the need to worry her with those small details. “How's he?” He asks, nodding to the man between them.  
  
Zia's eyes fall to Zulf. For a moment, she looks somber, but then she takes a deep breath, answering, “He'll be fine, we think. He was... He's pretty badly hurt, you know. And he's got himself a fever to top it all off. It's not as bad now. Rucks and I brought it down as much as we could. He woke a few times, but he was so weak and delirious with the fever that there wasn't getting much out of him. So we've been letting him sleep. It'll probably be a while before he's fully recovered but we should be able to get him there.”  
  
The Kid nods. It makes sense, he guesses, Zulf being ill. He found him in the snow, after all. He wonders how long the man had laid there, in the cold and the wet, while his brethren took out their misplaced anger on him.  
  
“We were surprised...” Zia trails off, sounding as if she is unsure where she wants to go with that sentence. “We didn't expect you to come back with him,” she settles on after a moment's hesitance.  
  
Kid watches her for a moment that lasts longer than it should, unasked questions hanging heavily in the air between them. He isn't ready to tell her what happened at the Terminals yet. He doesn't have the heart to tell her that Zulf's people – her people – are the ones who inflicted all that pain on him. He doesn't know how it will make her feel, and there are still other injuries that need healing over before he considers the possibility of opening new ones.  
  
“...Are you mad?” He asks after a moment, the words sticking in his throat. He has a feeling Rucks probably isn't too happy that he brought Zulf back with him. But he is more nervous about how Zia might feel. Zulf betrayed them, after all. They'd been attacked, the Bastion had been damaged, their pecker, squirt and anklegator had all been hurt protecting this place and Zia... He doesn't want her to be mad.  
  
Her eyes quickly lift from where they'd been lingering on Zulf's sleeping form to him, full of surprise. “That you brought him back? No, I-” she answers quickly, then falters, her gaze dropping again. “I'm not mad. I just... I asked him to come back with me, you know. When I went to the Terminals. He- He refused. I guess ...since then I've been trying to accept that he really didn't want to be here anymore.”  
  
Well, he doesn't know that Zulf _wants_ to be here. It wasn't as though he'd given the other man an option, nor had Zulf been in any condition to make that choice. But that's something he'll tell her another time. Kid shifts, rolls on his side so he is facing her. “And him?” He drops his gaze to indicate Zulf. “Are you still angry with him?”  
  


There is a pause, a moment in which Zia looks at the Kid while working her bottom lip between her teeth before she replies. “No,” she answers at last. “I don't think I am. I was, a little, before. But, he's been through so much... We all have. And now... Now there are other things to focus on. ... I was glad to see you come back. Both of you.”  
  
The Kid silently takes in her answer for a time before she turns his question back on him.  
  
“What about you? Why'd you bring him back?”  
  
He has to think on that before he can come up with an answer that makes any sense. He hasn't spent much time working out his own actions, after all. He hasn't been able to. “I'm not... mad,” he tells her. “Just... I want to understand why. I want to... I want to talk to him.”  
  
Then there's the second half of Zia's query. _Why?_  
  
When he thinks back, he just remembers _knowing_ what he had to do. When he saw Zulf there, bleeding on the snow, he just knew that the couldn't leave him. Coming back to the Bastion without him wasn't an option. Zulf _had_ to come back with him. Anything else was unthinkable.  
  
But none of that is a _reason_. It doesn't explain _why_ he brought him back, it doesn't explain _why_ it felt like leaving him wasn't an option. If he is honest with himself, he doesn't have an answer to _why_. He has no explanation other than that he just couldn't. It doesn't seem fair that he can't give a satisfactory answer to Zia's question. He watches Zulf, eyebrows knit together in a pensive expression, as if the unconscious man can give him the words he's looking for. “I don't know,” he settles on at last when he fails to overcome this communication barrier. “I just did. I had to.”  
  
Zia must be satisfied with that answer after all, though, because when the Kid looks back up at her, she is smiling, gentle and warm. She looks at him in a way that makes him think she understands despite his complete inability convey his thoughts and feelings. So he smiles back, feeling much more at peace with himself.  
  
“Thank you,” she tells him, and he is confused.  
  
“What for?”  
  
“For...” Her eyes lower, lingering on Zulf, or maybe her hands, held together in her lap. “Just for everything.” This time he thinks he's the one who understands. _For the Bastion, for Zulf, for us, for making the decision, for keeping us together._  
  
He doesn't altogether want to be thanked. What has he done so worthy of her thanks, when this whole time he's been running on instinct or his own (enigmatic, perhaps selfish) desires? Kid just shakes his head silently, then holds his arm across Zulf, offering a hand. He is met with a smile, and when she places her hand in his, he runs his thumb slowly over her knuckles.  
  
Their hands meet just above Zulf's chest, his own hands resting just a bit further down his torso. Zia looks at where they lie, moves their joined hands closer to Zulf's, and stretches her thumb to smooth over the back of his hand and then rest there. The Kid smiles at her when her eyes find him again, and he uncurls his little finger to hook it carefully around one of Zulf's.  
  
Zulf doesn't wake, but for a long time, Zia and the Kid simply sit there like that, smiling and content with each other's company.  
  
“Have you been sleeping?” The Kid asks, not realizing that his simple question and it's implications might be considered too blunt, too rude.  
  
“Well enough,” Zia replies, used to Kid's sometimes gruff nature. “You should probably get some more shut eye, though.”  
  
“Maybe.” He drops his gaze, feeling the way his eyelids want to droop, but he doesn't want to let go of this peaceful moment – the first he's had in longer than he can remember. He squeezes her hand and thinks, _Don't go yet_.  
  
Zia smiles. “I'll be here when you wake up.”  
  
A smile touches the Kid's lips one more time, and he squeezes her hand again in thanks. He thinks he could get used to this silent communication.  
  
He lets his eyelids shut.  
  
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~  
  
Later, Rucks is pulling back the flap of the tent, poking his head in. He means to tell Zia he will watch the Kid and Zulf a while, so she can get some rest herself. She spends most of her time watching after them, and he has to insist on her taking breaks as often as he can convince her to. She's a stubborn little thing, though you wouldn't guess it at first glance.  
  
What he finds surprises him  
  
Zulf looks like he hasn't woken in the past few hours at all. The Kid's shifted, sprawled out on his back and closer to Zulf than he remembers, blankets kicked down to around his knees, dead asleep.  
  
Kid's arm, though, is stretched halfway across Zulf, hand resting palm up on Zulf's middle where his fingers are laced together with Zia's pale digits.  
  
As for Zia – She's on the opposite side of Zulf, laying curled up, facing inwards, already fast asleep.  
  
Rucks harumph's softly to himself, but he doesn't have the heart to wake the poor girl so she can move to her own bedding. Instead, he throws a third blanket across her and closes the flap again, leaving them to what he hopes are peaceful dreams.


End file.
